My interests are photography, genealogy, writing, and travel. Actually, I find that genealogy itself encompasses all of these interests. So, this blog will be about my travels on the road to find our long-lost cousins; to discover and record our family history, including (auto)biographies, in both text and photos.
To see how a particular person mentioned here fits into our family tree, LINK to my Father's or Mother's Genealogical web site (scroll down, right column).

Monday, September 1, 2008

Five Days since my "Birthday" on FaceBook

I finally became socially "networkable" and joined Facebook.com on 26 Aug 2008, or thereabouts. On the very next day, just as I was getting comfortable with the site's interface, the powers that be changed the face of FB. I can click on the very top, right, of the site's front page and go "back to the old Facebook". But who wants to go backwards? So, I'll just have to get used to the updated, new look.

I chose Facebook rather than say, MySpace, because over 150 people who write genealogy blogs on the Internet have chosen this particular social network to group together for mutual learning and understanding and to chat as virtual friends. There is also much back-slapping. Indeed, the group calls itself "Genea-bloggers", or "GBers" for short. The group began recently during the first week of July, 2008, and has grown rapidly. One of the GBers, Terry Thornton, and some of his colleagues, have gathered and indexed the blogs of all the other Genea-bloggers and posted it here. I jumped on the list of course (at least I thought I did). And Terry has become one of my FB friends.

Incidentally, in the next few days after joining Facebook, I did a search for my relatively unique surnames of Gailliot, Austel, and Kramp, and lo and behold, came up with several matches. I invited them to become my virtual friends and be participants in my virtual family reunion. It's virtually unbelievable. Though most of these new-found cousins were young and savvy regarding the Internet, I do hope someday to be introduced to their parents and grandparents and discover new history to add to OUR family history and genealogy.

I am looking forward to seeing where the facebook web site takes me- after I learn how to use all of its features. It even has an add-on application called "We're Related". Oh no-o-o-o-o, not another Internet family tree application. Trees, trees, and more trees.

Footnote

Getting the Most from this Blog

Most images, but not all, can be enlarged by clicking on them. Maximum size is usually 1024 x 960 pixels. Alternatively, or if image won't enlarge, link to my Picasa album to see SLIDE SHOW of full views and MAPPED locations for images. Always use your browser's back arrow key to return to blog. Hint: key f-11 to enlarge screen view, f-11 again to return.

To see where individual family members or ancestors mentioned in this blog fit into the big picture, that is the big TREE, link to either my father's genealogical web site or my Mother's. There, you will find genealogical databases with name indexes. Go to top of page, right column

The database at my mother's branch web site will be changed soon to the same format as my father's database (pedigrees and indexes rather than Modified Register).

Most entries have dates. If not, more than one entry was made on that day. Scroll up to first entry for date. Or, note date in title.